A primary curriculum can be incredibly complex, containing well over 100 projects or schemes covering over 10 subjects, thousands of lesson plans and tens of thousands of lesson resources. With Ofsted now taking deep dives into how subjects, concepts, skills and knowledge components are sequenced – often in granular detail – through your curriculum, it can be difficult to get your hands on the right information when an inspector calls.
It's a growing, very real concern that many primary school leaders have reported. Many of them have a well-designed curriculum in place but no real way to quickly articulate how each subject develops. CurriculumPRO will help you with this.
CurriculumPRO is a revolutionary new feature, exclusively available to schools using Curriculum Maestro. The CurriculumPRO tool allows you to find and articulate your curriculum content, sequencing and narrative structure in an easy and reliable way. It’s so much easier than retrieving folders and printing reams of paper - and is far more accurate.
If you are following the Cornerstones Curriculum exactly, then just leave 'Cornerstones Curriculum' selected to access all the features. If your school curriculum has been changed so that it is different from the 'Cornerstones Curriculum', you will only have access to Subject sequence, Big ideas interconnections and Concept search. This is because writing a narrative can only be created when all the pieces of a curriculum are in place. If you have changed the order of the projects or which projects will be taught, you will need to create your own Subject narrative, Year group narrative and Subject vocabulary lists as you will have changed the order and sequencing.
Functions of CurriculumPRO
CurriculumPRO provides you with the ability to view and articulate the narrative of a subject through the Cornerstones Curriculum, showing how it develops over time – for the whole school or by year group. It can also support you with the writing of your own narrative.
The tools of CurriculumPRO enable you to search for and highlight where:
- skills and knowledge components are covered across your curriculum
- big idea interconnections occur across the whole school or within a year group
- a concept is covered and how it is developed in your curriculum, across different subjects
You will also be able to view the development and progression of subject vocabulary by year group for the Cornerstones Curriculum.
Subject narrative
Subject narrative will allow you to view the order of your projects and provides a narrative of what the children will be learning. It demonstrates how learning is built upon from previous projects and explains how the projects are sequenced. This can be viewed from Nursery right through to Year 6.
Year group narrative
Year group narrative allows you to look at all subjects in a specific year group, rather than one subject for all year groups. It will show what will be taught in the subject within the different projects and then how and where that learning was introduced previously. This helps show the cyclical nature of learning and how it is revisited over time.
Subject sequence
Subject sequence will show the order in which you will be teaching the programmes of study, skills and knowledge objectives for a particular subject. You can use the ‘Content options’ to select which of the statements and objectives you want to view. The search function will allow you to search for any keywords or themes you wish to identify.
Big ideas interconnection
Big idea interconnections is very similar to the layout of the Subject sequence page. However, rather than showing the programmes of study, skills and knowledge objectives for a particular subject, it will allow you to demonstrate how learning is linked across your curriculum by our larger concepts or ’big ideas’.
Concept search
Concept search will help you locate where different themes and concepts will be covered in your curriculum. Use the search box and the word will be highlighted, whether it is part of a programme of study, skills or knowledge objectives.
Subject vocabulary
Subject vocabulary demonstrates how the key vocabulary for each subject is sequenced across a year, showing how keywords and concepts are introduced and revisited.